There is nothing secret about it. These are really simple actions and they are the core of success.But not everybody uses them and a lot of people who actually use these steps have failed.
Here is how you do it:
Be Clear on what you want and how you will achieve it.
Break your goals down into achievable tasks and further down into 1 step actions.
Put a deadline on each action.
Put these actions in your schedule.
Do, Do, Do! Take these actions.
Take stock regularly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Whatever works for you.
Rinse and repeat.
This is where you will fail and how to avoid it
1. Most will fail at the consistency part.
At the beginning you are excited and all driven but as it gets monotonous and the steam wears off. It is not new anymore, you get bored.
How to avoid this?
By Checking in with your vision every day! Yes, it takes 2 minutes to look at your vision board to breathe and see what you want. What you are doing all this for. What motivates you. Close your eyes and imagine the emotion you will feel when you achieve your goal. Will you feel happy? Excited, giddy, top of the world, relaxed, content, calm, sense of achievement, pride, confidence, joy. Imagine the feeling and feel it now, the little butterflies in your tummy, your heart beating faster and the rush of emotions.
Is your goal a holiday with your family? A nice sum in your bank account? The car or house you want?
What will you be doing? How will you be feeling?
Carry these feelings with you through the rest of the day, safe in the knowledge that it will happen, because you are doing the right things, taking the right actions to make your dreams and goals happen.
This, your vision is your emotional connection to your goals. This is what makes it all worthwhile. At the end of the day, this is why you are doing what you do.
The secret is to keep your emotional connection with your goals, in order to keep yourself motivated.
2. You are not seeing result quickly enough and you start to doubt the effectiveness of all this.
Whatever you do, success WILL NOT happen overnight. You will not start selling a product or a service today and end up with 10, 000 sales in the next week.There are few exceptions to this, e.g, someone well position may share your product on social media and it can go viral. Great. But are you willing to just sit around doing nothing, waiting and hoping for this to happen? Unlikely.
Yet, a lot of people give up at this stage, because all the ‘work’ they are doing are not providing short term results. The short term cost is greater, i.e, the cost of taking action seem much greater than the reward of hitting the goal.
How to avoid this:
It’s in knowing the difference between a long term goal and a short term one.By definition, a long term goal will take longer to achieve, this is usually because it :
1. Has a lot of steps
2. Requires a lot of time, months, possibly even years,
3. Requires resources you don’t currently have but need to acquire, e.g funds, knowledge, team, infrastructure
No matter how wild your dreams and visions are, you also need a realistic approach to make it happen. What I mean by this is : You may have dreams of taking your business from online to a chain of brick and mortar stores or buying a big house.
You break this goal down to find out what are the costs involved, what other things are involved. E.g the financial cost, team you need, marketing, etc.
So all these steps you need to have a deadline for each, and divide them into actionable steps. Some goals, especially long term goals will have lots of step and require longer, maybe years to carry out.
Does this mean it is impossible?
No.
If the Wright brothers did not dream of flying, we would would still be firmly stuck on the ground. Their dream defied gravity.
What will your dream do?
The secret is to measure all these individual actions, and count each one as a win as you tick them off. Each individual action you tick off is the measure of your big long term goal. You can see it happening as you tick of each step. You can see yourself getting closer to achieving your goal.
3.You are working hard and not seeing results.
You are working hard, possibly even long hours in a day, spending lots of money, time and effort but you are no nearer to your goals. You are frustrated, annoyed, angry, maybe even depressed.
How to avoid this:
Schedule in regular reviews.
Taking stock and reviewing means you are constantly looking at your visions and goals and measuring the actions you are taking against it!You will KNOW if something is not taking you to your goal, if your path is deviating, or if something is not working and needs to change.
You will KNOW what IS working and what you can do MORE of.
The secret is simply : knowledge is power. You are in control, in control of your life. You are in control and able to achieve your vision.
Don’t get me wrong, I did not it is NOT EASY. If it was, more people will be happier, living the life and achieving the goals they want.
4. You fall off the band wagon and don’t know what to do.
You’ve lost track of where you are, what do to. You’ve stopped taking actions for whatever reasons, illness, too busy, tiredness, laziness, lost your mojo, _____fill in the blank.
It is OK! Yes you read that right.
IT IS OKAY.
It happens. It happens to all the high achievers and successful people too.
It happens to me often enough.
And it is ok. You probably feel bad, guilty, ashamed you’ve let yourself down, lost and worried that you’ve lost your chance at greatness… well don’t.
How to get over this:
Accept you fell of the fell behind.
FORGIVE yourself, because let’s face it, your opinion of yourself matters the most and shapes who you are and how you feel. So choose to forgive yourself.
Take a good look at your vision again, has it changed? Does it need updating?
Your vision changes and grows with you.
Make the changes, and do the little visualising and feeling exercise again.
Take stock of where you are, what has been done, what still needs to be done
Are you still on the right track? Do you need to make any changes?
And start the cycle again
That is all it takes… to never give up, not matter what.
The secret is to look at your vision, ditch negativity, forgive and accept and do it again.
If you don’t give up you haven’t failed.
Originally published at medium.com